the easiest one in the book

Dumb AZ Politician Easily Falls For FBI’s Free Baseball Ticket Trap

It is time for another Arizona politics bedtime story! Undercover FBI agents running a fake real estate company bought former Tempe City Councilman and current state Representative Ben Arredondo a few thousand dollars’ worth of tickets to baseball and football games. He loved this gesture so very much that in return, “Arredondo brokered meetings between the undercover agents and other public officials, divulged information regarding the city of Tempe’s bidding process, and attempted to persuade other city officials to approve the purported development project,” allegedly, according to the indictment. If it’s this cheap to buy off corrupt Arizona politicians, shouldn’t the local underfunded public school science clubs hold a few dozen bake sales and take the proceeds over to the nearest elected official and get, say, a particle collider to put behind the gymnasium?

This started in 2009, according to the indictment, when Arredondo had the agents buy tables at charity events a couple of times, and then Arredondo would choose who got to sit at those tables.

Then Arredondo hit up an Arizona Cardinals game, courtesy of the “company”/FBI, followed by four tickets to see the New York Yankees in a playoff game in Los Angeles, then 18 Arizona Diamondbacks tickets, and finally, two tickets to a college basketball game between Duke and Michigan State, the indictment says.

The grand total of the charity tables and the tickets: Around $6,000.

Meanwhile, Arredondo was working with city officials to make the deal happen, at one point saying the company would have “continued support” when he transitioned from the council to the House.

Beverly Hills surgeon explains at home fix for crepey skin around the arms, legs, and stomach.

“You guys will ask, you guys will have,” Arredondo’s quoted as saying. “I don’t know how else to say it. We’ll be just fine because not only [are we] covered at the city, we’re covered now at the state.”

Clever! And now Arredondo, a Republican turned Democrat, may end up paying a $1 million fine with some prison time, for his sports tickets. [Phoenix New Times]

Hahaha! Prison rape jokes are just the funniest thing EVER, especially since it's only bad people being raped! Rape is hilarious when it happens to bad people!

Wile E. Quixote

Oh come on, look me in the eye and tell me that if you somehow wandered into an alternate universe where Bush and Cheney had been impeached in 2007 by a Democratic Congress and turned over to Den Haag and ended up being convicted of war crimes that you wouldn't crack a bit of smile when they were thrown into a cell with a bunch of horny, and not very particular, Serb militiamen.

thatsitfortheother1

You might be surprised to learn that prisons in Northern Europe aren't run by the inmates like those in America.

sullivanst

Except for a couple of wings of the Maze for a few decades.

While the Europeans don't have the same attitude that prisons should (a) be a profit source for private corporations and (b) be made as ghastly as possible and therefore no attempt may be made to prevent inmates from suffering dehumanizing brutality on a daily basis, there's nowhere on earth where it's a safe place to be.

For example: "All Inmates of a prison for prisoners awaiting trial (Bordeaux, France) were eligible for this cross-sectional study. 375 inmates have been face-to-face interviewed by an experienced psychologist … Of them, 24% were victim of physical violence at least once a month and 10% perpetrated physical violence at least once a month."

thatsitfortheother1

Think anybody has taken a swing at Ratko yet?

I doubt it.

sullivanst

No, because the detention unit for the ICTY is run with considerably more focus on inmate safety than the rest of the Dutch prison system. Yes, I acknowledge that's quite relevant to this thread, but it does mean it's inappropriate to generalize from there to all of Northern Europe.

thatsitfortheother1

And, come to think of it, Bordeaux is only marginally Northern European.

sullivanst

Well, true, but given the choice I'd much rather be imprisoned in Bordeaux than Warsaw.

nounverb911

What sport does Arpaio enjoy?

Omophagist

I don't think driving Mexicans out to a remote part of the desert and shooting them in the back of the head is considered a sport…even in AZ.

SnarkoMarx

Bullfighting. But the Mexican bullfighter has to be wearing pink jailhouse garb and doesn't get a sword. And there are five bulls.

V572 Is this him?

It's not nice, and apparently illegal, to obviously do politics in the way it's actually done. Duke Cunningham taught us this. You have to have PACs and chiefs-of-staff and campaign committees. If you just take the lucre yourself, it doesn't look that good.

The reason every NFL and MLB and NBA city is golden-showering taxpayer money on team owners to buy facilities for their teams is that politicians lust after luxury box tickets like junkies after crack cocaine. Wouldn't have thought the moral pollution extended all the way to Tempé.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

One of the many things which makes me proud of my adopted city is that the SF Gigantes' AT&T park didn't use public money.

SorosBot

Man, AT&T must have got us cheep and paid SF the big bucks; here the city just renamed the subway station at the stadiums to AT&T station.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

In random London history, Tottenham football club still hate Arsenal for getting a tube station renamed back in 1932.

Barb

Hey Fukui! What's up with the super cool name, lol.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Tribute to your daughters and our friend Radio is all.

Hope everything is good.

Barb

Everything was great until 2 minutes ago when Jeff told me that there will be a total solar eclipse here on Sunday, LOL! That kinda shit freaks me out.

I can't be Barb, I jinx everybody whose name I steal. Just look wut happened to poor Christine O'Dummy.

HistoriCat

I'm open to changing my name but not sure what would look good:
HistoriBarb
RadioBarbcat
Historadiobarb

They just don't sing!

Dashboard Barb

Historibarb sounds good.

Steverino247

It won't be total. Annular. About 85 to 90 percent coverage. Depending on where you are you will see a big black thing in front of the sun from an angle or a brilliant ring with the moon in the middle. Be sure to be safe and don't look directly at it. Even the ring is enough to cause damage. Poke a hole in a piece of card stock and then project the Sun's image through that hole onto a white surface.

Wile E. Quixote

Damn. I can't find that absolutely hilarious monologue from Don DeLillo's The Day Room which describes how best to safely view a solar eclipse. My Bing-fu is weak.

Considering my name literally translates to "Do the Fox," I'm not so sure how Barb would sound wedged in there.

Dashboard Barb

Do the Barb. Duh

thatsitfortheother1

I'm gonna still hate Chelsea if they beat München on Saturday.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

They'll do 'em like the sausage-munchers they are.

(I hope)

thatsitfortheother1

Given Bayern's recent play, I wouln't bet against you.

BerkeleyBear

Nah, they just got the land for next to nothing and a massive tax abatement. So it just used public assets, not money.

Heck, Eddie DeBartolo would have built the Niners a new stadium with no dedicated long term public funds – he just wanted a tax free shopping mall on sight and a low interest loan in the form of bonds to hold him over. Of course that was before he got popped trying to buy off people in Louisiana (and how out there do you have to be to get popped for corruption there?)

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Oh, I knew the advantageous terms they got the land on, but let's be fair and say that the regeneration of the area around AT&T was probably a decent deal.

The new 49ers thing is a boondoggle, and as for the new Warriors and A's crap … well. Business as usual, it seems.

BerkeleyBear

I was talking about the old 49ers thing (the whole moving to Santa Clara unless we get a new home is a boondoggle I agree). Back in 97-98, the voters actually approved a bond that would have supported a stadium at no direct public funding (since it would have all theoretically been raised from buyers on the market and eventually repaid) but Eddie got in trouble before he could get all the other pieces in place. Then Steve Young and Jerry Rice went down in rapid succession, the team went in the crapper and the Yorks didn't want to spend any money.

At least the other issues the Niners bond helped (mainly a bond for the Zoo) went ahead as planned.

Callyson

How nice…

…meanwhile, I am praying that my adopted city does not give us a double whammy of using public tax funds (and I am counting tax credits as public funds–money has to be made up somewhere, and don't tell me the stadium will be a money maker) AND placing it in downtown Los Angeles (just what the area needs–yet more congestion)…

Yes. Yes, it is. We eat dirt and cactus thorns here at least twice a week for dinner. Six grand (grande?) buys a lot of tacos (from the drive thru shack that we all know employs undocumented workers, but the food is just too damn good to call ICE on them).

Steverino247

It's not the money. It's the thought (corruption) that counts. This fucker is toast. Way to go FBI!

HateMachine

Just a few dinners and ball games? He could've gotten way more if he'd just played it a little more coy before he let the feds fuck him.

Monsieur_Grumpe

Sports tickets? Without any gay hookers, wet suits or Truck Nutz abuse I give this scandal a D-. Ben, you are a disappointment in so many ways.

owhatever

He scored tickets to Michigan State-Duke? Cool.

rickmaci

Risk going to jail over Michigan State-Duke?? That seems enough to justify an insanity plea.

Negropolis

Oh, God, why couldn't this have been Jan Brewer or Trent Franks or (Fill in the Blank)? A former Tempe city councilman is like an ex-deputy Maricopa County clerk. Hell, it could have at least been a Mesa city councilperson.

I don’t know how else to say it.

That's great, because it makes it easier to weed out the shameless grifters.

fitley

You mean Trent "Wood Eye" Franks?

Negropolis

Yeah, Congressman Weak-eyed Hair Lips.

anniegetyerfun

Weird. I mean, he doesn't LOOK unbelievably stupid at all.

Pragmatist2

Oh! This is all "according to the indictment"!!!!
That's so Lamestream Media. Reporting based on indictments instead of something you maybe saw on the Internet.

You don't start your chain with Fox. First, get one of the smaller sources (newspaper, radio, television – does not matter) to raise the issue first. Then, Fox News can say "media reports are surfacing of Obama blah blah blah".

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Because we all know that if there's something that Phoenix needs then it's more shitty overpriced housing.

Isn't one of the Palin offspring an Arizona resident now? Someone should set them up together.

rocktonsam

I think she moved back home and to try abstaining from sex.

for amerikkka

SorosBot

"New York Yankees in a playoff game in Los Angeles, then 18 Arizona Diamondbacks tickets, and finally, two tickets to a college basketball game between Duke and Michigan State, the indictment says."

Um, why did the shitty college sports that nobody cares about seal the deal, after the tickets to real games that people actually want to go to apparently weren't good enough?

Negropolis

You obviously don't know about college sports. A Duke-MSU game is a Big Fucking Deal, let me tell you, especially if you want to compare them to any pro team out of Arizona. The Yankees? Yeah, you might have a point.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

but why oh why does some Arizona douchebagel want Duke-MSU tickets?

BerkeleyBear

If it was the 2011 game, it was at MSG in New York in a pre-season tourney. It was also coach K's win that put him past Bob Knight. So for any douche who considers themselves a basketball fan it might be a big deal. Sorta like Morimoto taking on Batali in Battle Fat Bastard.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Now you're making a metaphor I can understand.

Negropolis

Well, that and any game between two teams of such high national caliber is a good game, regardless. But, I'm a Spartan fan, so I'm a little biased. That said, I think some folks forget just how unpopular pro-sports are in areas of the country with major college sports dynasties. I mean, the Pistons wish they still had a following like MSU or even UofM.

Really? The Cardinals? What a crappy football team to go to jail over.

elgin_pelican

Usually, attending a Cardinals game is the result of a plea bargain. You're doing it WRONG!

HtmlSymbol

The idiot should have been ejected from the park after this moronic incident. I am just as disappointed in the security at the park as well. The fan SHOULD have been ejected rather than allowed to return to his seat to possibly try it again and perhaps harm or kill someone else. Security SHOULD have bard him for re-entering the park for the All-Star game if he had tickets, and for the rest of the season at least. Shame on the fan, and shame on the security officers for a total lack of judgement on both parts.

I think this might be an example of why helmets should be mandatory for people who insist on playing full body contact croquet, other than that… WTF???

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Security SHOULD have bard him

When Salas strives some ball’s vast weight to throw,
The line, too, hitters and the words move slow.
Not so when swift Sandoval scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’unbending field, and skims along the main.

Wtf are you talking about, anyway?

sullivanst

Do there see I what you.

Took me until the second reading to get it though. Damn you brainautocorrect.

Fukui-sanRadioBarb

Iambic pentameter ftw.

sullivanst

My brain read what the OC meant, not what they wrote, so I kinda missed your inspiration.

I am thinking he is a plant by the republicans trying to make democrats look worse than they already do to most of the dried up old prunes who retired from the Midwest in Arizona. He gets a slap on the wrist and some generous donor puts a few bucks in the Caymans for him.

HarryButtle

He's takin' one for the team. He'll do his time quietly and they'll set him up after he gets out. He's Mr Blonde, fer fuck's sake.

"Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out to the (private) box.
Score me some hookers and cracker jack,
I don't care what you get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
You get what you want that's the game.
For it's one, two, three wire taps you're caught,
At the old ball game."

C_R_Eature

Well, I almost had a Pithy Comment all ready to go, but then I suddenly realized that I really don't give a rat's ass about any of this. So, I'll just post this age old question in musical form.

not that Radio

There was an interview with Wes Anderson, where he was talking about Seu Jorge's version of "Rock 'n Roll Suicide". He said "which one of those words was 'cigarette', exactly?"

C_R_Eature

Really good point. I don't even remotely understand Portuguese, but I love Seu Jorge's Bowie versions and when I'm listening to them I couldn't give a fuck about the lyrics. Go figure.

I've had "Quicksand" stuck in my head all day, as a result of that "Golden Dawn" thread from last night. I listened to it about 6 times today at work, BUT IT'S STILL FUCKIN THERE. Maybe if I bang it out on the guitar…

C_R_Eature

I usually make up filthy lyrics to help me deal with Earworms. They don't go away, but they become more fun.

If those kids have brownies with the pecans stuck on top I'll get a dozen, I need some damn chocolate, I am so depressed.

ThundercatHo

How about some nice chewy brownies with walnuts throughout and some rich chocolate frosting on top with a nice tall glass of ice cold milk? Good grief, now I'm jonesing. Good thing there's leftover M-day candy.

It took three years and $6,000 worth of tickets to get one one ex-councilman from Tempe. They must hate to have to work–thinking of the easy days in Illinois with Rod Blagojevich trying to sell everything he could think of

elfgoldsackring

What a cheap slut.

keinsignal

Reminds me of Dean Zimmerman, a Minneapolis councilman from the Green Party. Guy got a two-year prison sentence in 2006 after accepting like $7,200 in cash from a local developer who turned out to have been working with the FBI all along (Dean claims he was going to use the money to build a retaining wall on some property in his district, and thought he was being given a charitable contribution). I knew both him and his wife pretty well – a good guy but a little too trusting and I suspect a little bit of a Robin Hood complex.

Nostrildamus

You couldn't bribe a Seattle pol like that. The Mariners suck.

anniegetyerfun

Maybe our non-existent NHL/NBA team won't?

Steverino247

This was a part-time job for the FBI. They certainly weren't working on this full-time with a bunch of agents. The idea was to keep certain guys busy and slap one asshole real hard so as to serve as a warning for the rest of the politicos whom they know are easily tempted. They can't catch them all or the system would collapse! So, they set up a few to keep the others careful.

MiniMencken

Finally, good old American know-how has created a truly affordable politician that nearly anyone can own. FTW!

rickmaci

Every time I read one of these petty corruption stories I recall the late great Speaker of the California Assembly, Jess Unruh. "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here."

ElPinche

This is good news for that old mexican-hating fuck Arpaio.

Sassomatic

He looks like he's thinking about the time he sniffed a girl's (boy's?) underwear.

I just hope those weren't Mets tickets he was after, because then he really sold himself short.

sullivanst

Hey now, Mets tickets may be easy to get, but at least they're not Cleveland.

finallyhappy

think I'll forward this my friends on our council. I do believe they are honest or at least would not be bought out for less than a million

finallyhappy

I add- a local politician just said that a married couple making $150,000 isn't rich(she is against raising taxes). Well, maybe not in the big scheme of rich people but if my husband and I had ever made $150,000(and we live in the same area)- I would have thought we were doing pretty darn well. Wonder if she got any baseball tickets or lots of cash from the rich(or not rich)

ttommyunger

Proving once and for all that stupid and crooked crosses all Party lines.

BaldarTFlagass

Wait a minute, the FBI was involved? How come this guy didn't end up buying a Stinger missile and a bunch of fake C-4 explosives from them, so he could blow up the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge or something?

HistoriBarb

Standards at the FBI have really fallen. This clearly Obama's fault.

Terry

" And now Arredondo, a Republican turned Democrat, may end up paying a $1 million fine with some prison time, for his sports tickets."

Good grief, give him back to the Republicans.

Tundra Grifter

Kirsten:

That would make a great movie! A poor community with terrible schools can't get government help so it pretends to be a crime organization to bribe politicians to improve itself.

Dashboard Buddha

We can call it The Mouse That Whimpered.

mavenmaven

Anyone who so lusts after watching grown men hit a ball around with a stick probably shouldn't be making important decisions anyway.

not that Radio

Can of corn!

Dashboard Barb

I dunno…you seem to hold things up pretty securely.

DaRooster

1 corrupt politician down… only… umm… I lost count… left to go…. anybody?

DahBoner

It's a good thing most Arizona politicians are dumb, otherwise they might get offended if they thought about why the Tempe City Government building is an upside down pyramid!